Arunachal: Dy CM hold Pre-Budget Consultative Meeting with Agri & allied Dept
Itanagar
Deputy Chief Minister, Chowna Mein said the Officers of Agriculture & allied departments like Horticulture, Animal Husbandry & Veterinary and Fishery to come up with pragmatic schemes that will help to boost the farmers’ income and to achieve the target of doubling their income by 2022 as envisioned by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
He said that we can achieve self sustainable development through agriculture & allied sectors and urged the departments to make prospective plan for long term (five year) and short term (one year) policy to boost agriculture & allied sectors. “It is also through these sectors we can strengthen the farmers towards self-employment.”
He also said to give emphasize on local spice production, functionalize the Auction Centres to boost the marketing of local spice productions and also urge to encourage citronella cultivation for oil production. He also emphasized on irrigation system and said to revamp the old irrigation channels to improve the irrigation system.
Urging the Govt departments to gear up and perform, he informed that Rs 1700 Crore allocated to various departments in the last year’s budget remained unspent against which Utilization Certificates could not be submitted by the depts.
Home Minister, Bamang Felix while participating in the meeting have called to boost marketing of the agriculture & horticulture produce. Citing examples of the large cardamom, which is cultivated by most of the farmers in large numbers, he said that once it was a success story but due to absence of proper marketing, farmers are not able to sell their produce and now it is becoming a failing story. He added that our farmers are hard working, they will grow anything we tell them to grow but the need of the hour is to give them a proper marketing facility where they can sell their produce in remunerative price.
Minister of Agriculrue, Horiculture, Animal Husbandry, Veterinary & Dairy Development and Fishery, Tage Taki said that he is working with a single mission to achieve the target of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022. “To double their income, we need to uplift Dairy Farming, Piggery, Fishery and Backyard poultry which will give the farmer easy and quick income”, he said. He urged to keep sufficient fund for purchase of feeds, which is the main hurdles in dairy farming, piggery, poultry and fishery. He also emphasize on cultivation of maize, millets and vegetables and on community fenching of the agricultural land. He said that traditional system of providing tractors through CM’s Farm Mechanization Scheme will be updated with more useful and lighter modern machineries.
Among others, A K Singh, Commissioner (Agriculture Production), Bidol Tayeng, Secretary (AHV & Dairy Development), Mimum Tayeng, Secretary (Agriculture & Horticulture), Geyum Padu, Secretary (Fishery), Himanshu Gupta, Secretary (Planning), Dr Gopa Kumaran Nair, GM NABARD and Directors of Agriculture, Horticulture, AHV & Dairy Development, Fishery, Soil Conservation (RWD) and Horticulture Research Development Centre were also present in the meeting and give their inputs.
